


it will come to me later

by waveydnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 01:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19713109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: phil thinks about having kids





	it will come to me later

“Oh, look at that darling little thing. Look Nige, he’s smiling at you.”

Kath is leaned to the side to whisper loudly to her husband, pointing at the baby drooling on the shoulder of the woman sat at the table across from them.

The kid definitely isn’t smiling, but he is cute, he’ll give his mum that. All baby creatures are cute. That’s just a Darwinian survival tactic, he reckons. They have to be cute to make it past infancy if they’re as difficult to deal with as everyone says.

Nigel smiles at the lump of cooing chub and gives him a little wave. Perhaps age has softened him a bit; Phil never remembers his dad being soft like that. Maybe Phil just outgrew his cute phase too quickly to recall the coddling.

Across their own table Phil thinks he catches a look shared between Cornelia and Martyn, but he can’t be sure.

The mum seems to sense that her bundle of joy is being admired from afar. She turns her head round and Kath says, “He’s gorgeous. How old?”

The lady’s tired looking face lights up, and she turns her whole body around to engage in answering Kath’s many questions.

The discomfort Phil feels is clearly mirrored in Cornelia’s posture. They both look down at their half eaten breakfasts awkwardly, and Martyn surreptitiously excuses himself to use the toilet.

Beside Phil, Dan is fully immersed in his weekly cheat meal, shoveling eggs and sausage in his gob like he hasn’t seen food in years. Phil picks up his coffee and tips his head back to neck it as his mum asks the lady how the kid sleeps.

-

His mum likes to remind him at every possible opportunity what a handful Phil was as a child. ‘Naughty’ is the descriptor she likes to use, but she never has all that many examples, and the ones she does have suggest more that he was weird than anything else.

And he remembers that. He knows he was weird. None of his mates ever let him forget it. Even Dan doesn’t let him forget it now, though his utterances of, “you’re so strange,” are filled with a lot more depth of feeling than the kids’ back at school.

Sometimes he wonders if ‘weird’ was code for gay all along. Would he still be the person he is now if that crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar was real? Are his idiosyncrasies inherent or were they cultivated as a way to mask an identity he wasn’t ready to share with the world just yet?

Back then he felt wrong; now he mostly just feels quirky. Which he likes. He likes the things that set him apart from everyone else, and somehow the universe had seen fit to reward him for all the things that make him divergent. He got lucky. He knows that.

He grew out of the shame. He doesn’t feel the need to be loud about it, but he likes who he is. These days there aren’t many things he’d change if given the chance.

Dan had it worse, even worse than what Phil had fully realized. He still struggles every day to combat the pervasive belief that straightening out his bent edges would make his life easier. Pride is lovely in theory and an incredibly tricky thing in practice.

Last time they’d gone out for dinner just the two of them the waiter had brought them separate checks without even asking, and neither of them said a word about it. They paid for their own meals and went home and Dan gave him a blowjob on the sofa. Their pride has long been a quiet thing, a celebration they mostly kept behind frosted glass.

Life looks a lot different than it did when they were children. For themselves as they are now, and probably for the future lives of kids like that baby in the restaurant this morning.

Probably.

-

Emily is cute. She looks like her mum and sings loudly and out of key just to drive Ian mental. She likes to sit in Dan’s lap and play with his hands while they watch Peppa Pig whenever he and Phil visit Manchester. She jumps on Phil’s head to wake him up in the mornings and always begs him to make her pancakes.

Phil loves her. He held her fragile little body when she was only a few days old. He’s watched her grow from a tiny little bean into a charming kid who loves hearing all the random animal facts he’s got tucked up in the back of his brain. She’s smarter than a six year old has any business being.

He doesn’t see Ian as much as he’d like to anymore. It’s hard to make plans around the schedule of a little person whose moods are unpredictable and whose adherence to strict routines can mean the difference between angelic sweetness and meltdowns of frightening proportions.

They still try. They go up when they can, and every time they visit, Emily has grown a little more. She’s a different person every six months, which means Ian and Lauren are too, in a way, molding themselves into whatever their daughter needs them to be.

Phil doesn’t really understand it, but he reckons that makes sense. He can’t even keep his houseplants alive.

-

Bryony kind of hates kids. She thinks they’re loud and annoying.

Phil also thinks kids are loud and annoying sometimes, but he doesn’t hate them. He finds it hard to hold anything against little humans whose brains haven’t even fully developed yet.

Besides, his favourite person in the whole world can be loud and annoying a lot of the time too.

He might even go so far as to say he _likes_ kids. He likes the weird things they say. He likes the way their minds seem to work in ways that only make sense to themselves. It reminds him a little of himself.

Maybe in some ways he still feels like a kid. He’s stubborn and impatient and he genuinely does eat way too much sugar, and despite his recent branding, he’s always had trouble with trying new things. He knows what he likes, and branching out beyond what’s safe mostly just feels scary and unnecessary. Dan will nudge him sometimes, when he’s being extra pigheaded. He knows how to help Phil inch his way out of his comfort zone if he thinks it’s something Phil wants.

Phil doesn’t know if this is something he wants.

-

So he asks, because that’s always better than stewing in anxiety for days on end until he can’t eat and his heart is racing and his head feels like it’s about to explode.

“We don’t want kids, do we?”

Dan looks up from his laptop. “Excuse me?”

“I was just… thinking.”

Dan cocks an eyebrow. “About kids? Really?”

Phil shrugs. “Mum was in love with that baby the other day. Just got me thinking, I guess.”

“That’s kind of a big thing to just drop on me, man.”

“I’m not dropping anything, I’m just… confirming.”

“I didn’t think we’d ever confirmed that.”

Phil sighs. “We haven’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Because of a cute baby in a restaurant?”

“Because of… well, yeah. Because the baby got me thinking.”

Dan shuts his laptop and puts it on the coffee table. He reangles his entire body, all his attention focused squarely on Phil. “Are we getting into this right now?”

Phil wants to shrink back from it immediately. It really _is_ a big thing, and to Dan it must seem to be coming completely out of left field.

Sometimes Phil just gets fixated.

“We don’t have to,” he says quietly.

“But you’re thinking about it.” Dan crosses his legs underneath himself. “Which means we kind of have to.”

“All you have to do is tell me we don’t and I’ll forget about it.”

Dan frowns. “Is it… do you want one?”

Phil just stares at the unwashed brown curls pushed up from Dan’s forehead. He doesn’t know how to answer that.

“Now?” Dan asks, voice pitchy with nerves.

That works to shake Phil from his inertia. “No. Hell no.”

Dan breathes out like he’s relieved. “Ok. Good.”

“Good,” Phil repeats.

“So… we’re good.”

“We are,” Phil says, stretching his leg out to dig his toes into Dan’s calf. “We always were.”

“I’m not gonna come home from therapy next week to find you with—”

His breath is knocked right out of him as Phil reams him in the face with a cushion. He’s had just about enough of this conversation for today.

-

“But what about children?”

He still hears those words in his head sometimes, like some kind of PTSD flashback, the first words his grandmother had uttered when he told her he was gay. As if he could change his entire sexuality on the off chance he wanted to have kids one day. As if having sex with a woman was the only way to start a family.

As if children are even necessary for a family. Phil has a family. He doesn’t need little clones of himself to feel happy with his life.

But sometimes he thinks about how his mother’s face lights up even at the sight of strangers’ children, and the weight of the world crushes him with a strange kind of secondhand guilt.

Martyn certainly will never be the Lester brother to give Kath and Nigel grandchildren. Phil has seen Cornelia with children; he knows she’d make an amazing mother, but being good with children, even loving and respecting them doesn’t mean you want to bring your own into the world, and she has never minced words about her opinion on the matter.

Phil doesn’t actually know Martyn’s intimate thoughts on the topic. He isn’t necessarily a sharer when it comes to details that personal, and neither is Phil. In this case maybe not even with himself. He doesn’t have Bryony or Cornelia’s certainty, or on the other end of the spectrum, his mother’s.

He’s also never had the kind of easygoing nature his brother has. So now that he’s thinking about it, he doesn’t know how to _stop_ thinking about it. He doesn’t know how to rid himself of the nagging feeling that he should be decided by now, one way or the other.

-

He’s slumped into the sofa scrolling through Instagram on his phone when Dan starts shouting at him.

“Phil!”

He looks up, realizing immediately that Dan must have been stood there trying to get his attention for a while. “What?”

“I was starting to think you were legitimately stuck in a waking coma, jesus christ.” Dan reaches down to press on Phil’s knee, and it’s only then that Phil realizes he’d been bouncing it up and down rather violently.

“Sorry,” Phil mutters, sliding his phone into the pocket of his shorts. “What’s up?”

“What are you doing?” Dan asks. “Watching macrophilia porn again?”

Phil rolls his eyes. “I don’t have a thing for that.”

“Sure,” Dan says, sitting down on the other end of the couch and bringing his feet up to rest on Phil’s lap. Phil puts his hands around one without even really thinking about it, digging his thumb into the arch of the sole and massaging in firm little circles.

Dan hums, eyes drifting shut. “Seriously, what were you looking at? I was trying to get your attention for a solid minute.”

He could lie. Maybe he should.

“Louise’s Instagram.”

Dan opens his eyes and lifts his head to frown at Phil. “Louise?”

Phil nods.

Dan studies him for a good while and Phil pretends not to notice, doubling his efforts on massaging Dan’s foot.

When minutes have passed and Dan hasn’t said anything, Phil’s skin is crawling with all the unanswered questions hanging thick in the space between them.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks quietly, moving on to Dan’s other foot.

“You,” Dan says. “And how annoying it is that I still don’t understand you sometimes.”

“Thought my weird brain was part of my appeal.” He smiles.

Dan doesn’t smile back. “Not when it comes to important stuff.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Phil says, squeezing Dan’s foot. “It’s nothing important.”

Dan gives him a look.

“It’s not,” he insists. “It’s just me thinking too much.”

“As always,” Dan says gently.

Ironically, Phil thinks about that for a beat before he nods in agreement.

“I don’t know if I want one.” Dan’s voice is just a hair above a whisper.

“Now?”

He sits up and pulls his foot away, looking Phil dead in the face. “Ever.”

Phil sits there and waits. He hears Dan’s words in his head and waits to feel some kind of pain or fear or loss for what may never be…

And it doesn’t come.

He knows why. Dan doesn’t have to tell him. He knows there are some wounds that were cut too deep, some scars that will never really heal. Fixing himself is hard enough.

They don’t need to make it harder by adding an unfathomable amount of responsibility on top of it.

“I was so awkward with Pearl, d’you remember?” Phil murmurs, reaching out to take Dan’s foot again.

“No more awkward than me.”

This time it’s Phil’s turn to give Dan a look. It’s bullshit and they both know it.

Now Dan smiles. “Awkwardness is also part of your appeal.”

-

“You understand me,” Phil says in bed a few days later, as if no time has passed at all.

“I try to.”

Phil’s not sure Dan even remembers the context for the statement. Maybe it doesn’t matter. “And I understand you.”

Dan rolls over and lets his head come to rest on Phil’s shoulder. “As well as anyone ever could.”

Years ago, words like that would’ve felt more like a criticism than a declaration of love. Knowing each other inside and out had always been the one display of affection they were allowed without fear of outing themselves.

They’ve grown up so much since then. Their truth has been made known in no uncertain terms, and Phil doesn’t take it personally to be reminded that there are some things he’ll never know about Dan.

Not _too_ personally anyway.

“We’re happy,” he says quietly.

Dan nods, hair tickling Phil’s shoulder with the movement.

“We don’t owe anyone anything.” He’s speaking as much for himself as for Dan. Probably even more.

“You owe me a blowie for doing the washing up last night,” Dan says sleepily. “It was your night.”

Phil reaches down to bring Dan’s hand to his mouth and give it a good hearty chomp.

“Oi!” Dan shrieks, pulling his fingers free. “No teeth, just tongue.”

He laughs when Phil tells him he hates him. He kisses Phil’s neck and says, “Go to sleep, idiot.”

And they do.


End file.
